Mortality
by Puppeteer of the Realms
Summary: A peculiar Guardian hides in plain sight, living a normal everyday life, with an unknown past and an unfortunate turn of events. Life was good, however. She doesn't have to worry about fighting for the cause of mankind, she doesn't have to risk her own life for people she doesn't know. Then again, how can she risk her life if she is no longer immortal?
1. Misplaced Tools

**Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own Destiny. The copyright goes to Bungie and Activision.**

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><p>Today was just like any other day. The Eastern docking bay was alive with the steady thrum and chatter of stellar turbines igniting and turning over. Guardians and civilians alike were taxiing down the multitude of runways to and from the city, as well as fully-armed assault ships spinning up warp drives in preparation to take to combat, far from the safety of the Last City.<p>

It was just another day in the life of a certain tinkering woman on the bare-back of a shabby looking jump ship from decades, maybe even centuries back. She was waist-deep in the innards of the large starboard engine, trying everything in her might to salvage the primary turbine.

"Where did you say you found this thing?" she asked from under the bundles of frayed wires and jagged plates. The only thing that could be seen by the ships current owner, who also sat atop the hull closer to the cockpit, was a pair of orange pants, work boots and a similarly orange jacket tied around the woman's waist.

"The Cosmodrome.." came the response in the form of the external speakers of a standard proto-suit. From the garbled, low quality sound, Phae couldn't tell who, or _what _was on the other side of that helmet.

"Riiight.." she quipped, not attempting to hide the sarcasm in her tone. "So were you on patrol and just happened upon this heap of-... well, this heap?" Phae's voice echoed out of the oddly shaped chamber, which was definitely not designed for an engineer to fit in comfortably.

"Patrol? Uh.. n-no, I was.. well," the masked pilot stuttered in an attempt to tell their tale, to no avail. Phae still couldn't peg them for a man or a woman through that mis-fitted gear, then it dawned on her.

"Ooh! I get it!" she cooed as the rest of her body finally emerged from the engine compartment to reveal an Awoken woman with bone-white skin and mid length midnight blue hair tugged back by a black headband. "So this was your cherry?" she concluded with a knowing grin.

Phae sat there, watching and waiting for the other to respond, until about five seconds later she got a confused response. "Cherry?"

The enthusiastic engineer's smile melted and she waved a hand in the air, "Never mind.." _So boring, these newbies are never reborn with a sense of humor. _"Anyway," she began again with a clap of her blackened, greasy hands, "she's a real piece of work. Well.. she's a piece of something." Phae looked off into the distance as she spaced out and mentally recited the variables at hand, counting each on her fingers. "First things first, the warp drive. There isn't one. The primary rotary bearings are nearly ground smooth, and it's amazing they haven't sheared straight through the coupling yet. What else.. what else.. ah yes, the sub-orbital navigational system still works; assuming this thing would hold together long enough, you might be able to limp back to the Cosmodrome and find spare parts. I'd point you somewhere around the Tower, but this thing is outdated at best, and obsolete at worst. Sorry pal…"

With the nameless Guardian hunched over and looking rather disheartened, Phae hopped up and reluctantly made her way off the battered vessel. She felt guilty for not being able to make her space-worthy again, but there's only so much one person can do. With one final drop, she landed on the deck and glanced back to the pitiful ship one last time. _You can't win them all, _she thought before turning and walking off to the hangar bay housing her own fixer-upper.

She pulled the band keeping her hair pinned back off and shook the loose grime from skulking on the inside of a ship free. Just because someone comes in with a lost cause of a ship doesn't mean she was going to give up on her own impossible feat of a repair job. During the long trek back to her hanger, Phae mentally and methodically listed off things she would try today, before a blood-curdling screech of metal-on-metal erupted from the primary dock behind her. With gritted teeth and a clenched fist, she cursed her luck under her breath.

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><p>The organized, peaceful atmosphere in the hangar mere moments ago was replaced by a frantic scramble to action. The burning, mangled form of a jump ship scorched the deck a sooty black, and gouged deep grooves in the solid steel from the impact. All idle engineers were called to action in light of the event, though most of the seasoned vets would have done the same regardless. Despite the fact she wasn't a veteran mechanic by any stretch of the imagination, Phae answered the call.<p>

"Hey! Easy with that thing!" she heard from the pinnacle of the smoldering wreck as a Guardian leapt free of the hull. "You're gonna break the fuc-..." The raving Guardian lost a bit of kick in his step as the already dying ship took a nose-dive. "Aw shit... You know what? I don't care," he scoffed, scanning the bustling dock and locking his sights on Phae before stomping towards her with obvious impatience. "Hey, Little Miss Transcendence , where's the Shipwright? I gotta get an estimate on scrapping this heap of junk. No point in carrying on with her anymore."

"Well, maybe if you let the autopilot do its job, this wouldn't happen." The smooth voice of a Ghost filled the deck, and the Guardian began swatting at the air.

"Don't tell me what to do! I'll drive however I damn well please. If you have a problem with it, maybe we should take this outside!"

The Ghost spun in a slow, deliberate circle, "We _are_ outside."

"Don't get smart with me you glorified toaster with wings. You know what we called things like you in my day? Navi."

Phae's eyebrows perked up at the mention of the past, and she had to interject. "Wait wait wait.. You...remember your past life?"

The irate Guardian turned away from the floating nuisance before him to cast his gaze on the Awoken engineer before him, "Uh….duh?" he mocked with a tilt of his head.

"Huh.." Phae made a mental note to drill this "Guardian" - if she would dare call someone so vulgar such - for details later. Something was nagging at the back of Phae's mind, then she realized that the sheer lack of respect in this odd soldier distracted her from the task at hand. Phae swiftly pushed past the armored Titan - of which until that moment, she hadn't taken the time to realize he actually _was _a Titan - and rushed toward the burning ship. She untied the jacket around her waist and quickly slipped her arms through the sleeves of the fire-retardant suit while assessing the damage from afar, before the same voice broke her attention once again.

"Hey! I asked you a question!" the man called, now more annoyed than concerned for the loss of his ship.

Phae stopped in her tracks, spun on a heel in the same motion, and marched straight to the arrogant Titan. She reached forward and tucked her fingers in a gap between the armored plates just below the neck of the Guardian's armor and yanked his face forward. "I don't give a shit what you want," she hissed, "Because of you, there are people risking their lives to put out the fires of the burning wreck that YOU personally caused. So you can just sit your happy ass down and wait." For a split second, Phae just stared at her furious reflection in the polished face-shield of the Titan's helmet before giving him a strong push, putting him off balance.

Stomping off in the opposite direction toward the wreck, Phae fumed and vented through her inner thoughts. _Guardians, what would we do without them? Such a _shining _example of the moral standard._

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><p>"Jeez.. somebody's bitchy today." Roarke folded his arms before his chest, stubbornly fuming from the woman's pointed words.<p>

"She's right, you know," responded his Ghost with no trace of a snarky tone.

"Oh, be quiet, you accursed flying rock," Roarke said as he turned to look at the livid woman pointing about as if giving orders, then, hopping onto the side of his damaged ship, proceeding to remove a small golden hoop from one of the pockets on her person. "Would you look at that? That's a Bond!"

"Yes, the Bond of a Warlock. She is a Guardian as well," his Ghost supplemented, as if it were the most obvious, elementary of concepts.

"Really? I never gathered!" Roarke rebutted, irritation practically dripping from his voice. His arms falling from his chest, as he relaxed his posture and watched the strange Guardian work. "What I wanna know," the irate Titan vaguely pointed towards the wreck, "is why the hell a Guardian would be down here doing a Techie's work instead of going to good ol' terra-firma to stomp some Fallen ass?"

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><p>Phae picked up the pace from a brisk walk to a jog in order to close the gap between herself and the crippled jump ship. As she rejoined her fellow engineers, it became painfully obvious who was and was not used to this kind of chaos by now.<p>

"Hey! Look alive!" she bellowed as she jumped onto the scorched hull. "This is no different than what you do every day; now is not the time to gawk like you've never seen a burning ship before!" Her words finally broke the hypnotic trance that had gripped the greenest of the Engineering Corps.

With practiced motions, Phae produced a golden metal band from one of her jacket pockets and laced it around her left bicep. The two ends of the open loop touched and snapped together, tightening the slack with just enough force to snugly fit around her arm. As the connection was made and the Bond settled, she could feel her connection to the Light reignite. With the Light of the Traveler coursing through her veins, the world seemed to slow in its spin and the warm glow of her own inner Light bloomed.

"Alright, listen up! I want three crews on deck. Jackson: you're on skiff duty. Dante, Kael, you'll be coordinating with Jackson. Shriek: I need you to take a couple guys and gear up in thermal suits, you're on the fires. Double-time boys! We can't let them reach the fuel tanks." Jackson peeled off and made a dead sprint for the innermost wall of the hangar where the orbital skiffs were. Meanwhile, Shriek, an Exo engineer, tallied off two of the more experienced mechanics before following and making a break for the command deck to equip thermal-rated suits. "The rest of you! I need two cutting rigs, don't bother with the specifics, and a set of precision tools ASAP. Move people! That reactor is sitting pretty and ready to blow; we're on the clock!"

With that, Phae left the rest of her comrades to their respective tasks as she spun and began her own job. She gently rested her right palm on the blackened hull, allowing a barrier between her hand and the metal to halt the conduction of heat. After applying pressure and equalizing the shield under her hand, Phae emitted a pulse of energy through her palm which echoed through the mass of electronics and advanced machinery. She closed her eyes and maintained a rhythmic pulse every few seconds, trying to find an easily accessible fault in the armored plates.

It didn't take long to find a suitable chink in the ship's armor, which was perfect timing given the steady thrum of engines that now approached her from behind. Phae positioned herself parallel to the fault, rested her left knee and hand on the hull, and struck the fault with her right hand, bearing down as much void energy as she could muster. Purple waves radiated from her body and channeled down the length of her arm, before cascading and splitting a nearly foot wide crack in the hull. She stood and took a conscious step back, still giving off a faint purple glow as Dante and Kael each slipped a matching steel hook tied to the nearby floating skiff with sturdy heavy-duty cables.

"She's on!" bellowed Dante, one of the youngest engineers in the Corps. Both Dante and Kael cleared the vessel and jumped to the deck, while Phae kneeled and braced for the acceleration. Once the others were clear, she gave a thumbs-up to Jackson in the cockpit. Seconds later, support structure of the outer hull began to bow and groan in protest as the small skiff pulled and began slowly ripping the ship apart, before the armor peeled off like paper from the force. With the central structure of the ship exposed, Phae directed her attention to the rest of the crew who were now returning, fully prepared for the task at hand.

Phae gave a half smile, feeling like these greasy gear-heads were the closest thing she could get to a family. She quickly shook the thought aside and began directing them once more. "Mason, take one of those cutters and follow Shriek. I need you to sever the fuel lines to the thrusters after they put out those fires. Jackson, Kael, Dante, I need you to keep cutting and get to the fuel tanks themselves; if we fail from one side, we need to shut it down from the other." She contemplated for a moment while chewing on her thumb. _Here comes the fun part… _"Layla, you're on deck. We're going for the reactor."

The only other female member of the crew at the moment, Layla, looked at her nervously, and glanced around at the other idle crew members.  
>"Are you sure? I mean, I'm not very experienced. I might screw things up," she chewed her lip, "wouldn't you want someone more qualified for this?"<p>

Phae's smile reared its head again, and she responded in kind. "Of course I'm sure. You're just as motivated as anyone else here. And besides," she now broke out in a full grin, "wouldn't it be something if you got one up on these worn-out old sods?"

"Hey, now you're just making us look bad," chuckled one of the aforementioned sods. Without skipping a beat, everyone picked up the pace and almost doubled their efforts with raised spirits, leaving Layla to return the smile and join Phae atop the ship.

Even with that vote of confidence, Phae was still concerned that Layla's resolve may falter in the face of adversity.

"Don't worry, you'll do fine," she reassured with a smile. "Hey Zül! Send the tools up!" Upon her word, another Awoken engineer sent a rounded, angular crate with mounted hover pads towards the women. Once Phae and Layla had on hand any tools they would likely need on the interior of the ship, Phae turned her attention to the younger. "Alright, once we get in there, you don't need to worry about anything else. Our friends are making sure that the inside of this beater is the safest place to be right now. So: what is our goal?"

Layla paused for a moment and spaced out, recalling the drills from her training. The question wasn't rhetorical, but Phae wasn't asking for the answer either. She was making sure Layla stayed on the ball. "First, we need to minimize the power output from the reactor. Second, we need to carefully detach it as a power supply from the ship. Finally, we.. we-" she paused, stumped.

For just a moment, doubt creeped into Phae's mind as Layla struggled to remember, before a metaphorical light bulb sparked to life.

"Oh! Finally, we dissipate the power from the rest of the ship," the younger concluded with a distinct edge of triumph.

_Nice going, kid, _Phae thought with an ounce of pride in her comrade. If she were to be true to herself, she would have agreed with Layla; there were definitely more eligible candidates for a reactor retrieval present, but a Guardian's jump ship presented unique problems. The hulls were nigh on indestructible, however impaired they may be. It was too much of a hassle to field-strip a ship on the spot. With such an impromptu jury-rig, it left very little space to actually get inside the ship. In truth, Layla was the _only _option. The men wouldn't be able to fit, leave enough room for Phae, and somehow weasle an active reactor out all at the same time.

Phae knelt to the gash carved in the hull and got a firm grasp on the inner structure just below the armor layer. By simply applying a little pressure and channeling void energy through her palms, the molecular bonds in the steel sparked and nearly turned to slag at her touch. With bright purple flashes, a small section of the support structure was cut free, allowing Phae to pull the chunk out by hand and toss it aside. The flow of Light from the Traveler made seemingly impossible tasks the work of a child in perspective, greatly increasing one's strength and stamina.

"Shall we?" Phae offered with a smile before dropping feet first into the ship's fuselage. Layla quickly followed suit, taking care to avoid the still smoking burn marks in the metal struts. The inner framework of the jump ship was, to say the least, tight. Tight enough that the two women had to exhale to get through the first layer of wires and pipes. When they finally got to where they were going to set away at the task of dismantling the reactor, they were laying flat on their stomachs side-by-side with about a foot of space between the hull and the reactor casing itself. It didn't help that the space was dotted with the occasional support beam connecting the mechanical and structural components into a single cohesive object. "I need you to crawl that way and break into the box with a radioactive symbol on it," Phae instructed.

When nothing happened, she looked to the side to find that Layla was giving her the most puzzling, accusational expression. "Are you sure _I _should be handling that?"

"No no no, it's not dangerous," Phae clarified with a chuckle and a smile, "that's just the main junction diverting power to the other subsystems. The _real _dangerous part," she paused as she gestured to the patterned blast door she was laying on, "is right here." Turning her attention back to the doors in question, Phae keyed a seven digit command code into the nearby control pad. Seconds later, several audible clicks and hollow thunks echoed through the compartment. "Alright, I need you to kill power to the hydraulics."

"Got it," Layla chimed almost as an after-thought. The next few minutes were filled with metallic clicks, followed by the simultaneous release of pressure in the form of high-pressure jets of air from several specific locations. One of those locations was both sides of the blast doors below Phae, allowing her to simply muscle it open with her bare hands, whilst under the protection of her barrier.

It didn't prove very difficult to open a gap for Phae to get her fingers in. She simply projected a localized field of energy and used the same method Warlocks use to hover in mid-air. Once there was a small gap open, she pried her fingers through and forced the doors wider. Almost immediately, a fiery red light spilled into the compartment. Phae had to cover her face and squint to compensate for the intense barrage on her eyes.

"What is _that_?" Layla quickly rattled off as she instinctually held up a hand in defense.

It took a considerable amount of willpower to open her eyes and fully take in the interior of the reactor, but once she did, Phae's expression was contorted by bewilderment and anger. "No. Oooh no, that pretentious ass-hat and I are going to have words."

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><p>From start to finish, it took nearly half an hour for the crew under Phae's supervision to resolve the crisis. Roarke sat idly by and waited - rather impatiently - for Phae to return so he could get that hunk of scrap off his hands. He was relieved to finally see her emerge from the hull of the now stabilized ship, carrying a blackened sphere under her right arm.<p>

"Finally! What took you so fu- oof!" Roarke was quickly cut off as Phae spiked the heavy metal sphere straight into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him. The impact and loss of breath quickly sat him back down, leaving him reeling.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" Phae barked, furious.

"Wrong with me?! What the hell is-"

"Do you have any goddamn idea what this is?" she interrupted holding a metal pin notched with grooves and teeth in the Titan's face. "Do you?!"

Roarke took a moment to closely examine the object before answering. "No, why should I?" he wheezed, completely ignorant.

"This is a Cabal arming pin. It's a fail-safe that detonates the core in the case that one of us captures a Cabal assault ship."

"So? What's the big deal?" Roarke answered, once again getting impatient. Little did he know, he just pulled the pin on the ticking time-bomb that was the Awoken woman before him.

"So?! Had this pin not been faulty, your fucking stunt would have KILLED my entire crew!" Phae reached forward and grabbed a handful of cloth below Roarke's neck and lifted him to his feet. Her fury caused her to radiate a deadly looking purple aura as her eyes glowed bright neon-blue. She growled and shoved him back several feet with one hand and let go, causing the Titan to catch his balance before he fell. "Get the hell off my deck."

Phae pushed past the arrogant Titan before she snapped and made a decision she would regret. "Geez…what was her problem?" he asked, still completely oblivious to the averted disaster.

"You know, sometimes I wonder if I really _did _choose the right person or not," came an unwanted answer as his Ghost orbited Roarke's head before stopping in front of his faceplate.

The Titan gritted his teeth and tried to resist the urges to throw his Ghost like a baseball. "Don't tempt me, you little wind-up toy."

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><p>Author's Note: Hello Destiny community! Well, at the time of writing this, there aren't many of you out there (I think), but that's never stopped me. With the glorious launch of Bungie's newest masterpiece just four short days away, I can't help but say how excited I am. Also, how much of a horrendous understatement "excited" really is for me right now.<p>

Anywho, on with the show. I hope you enjoyed this little slice of the imagined lives of a few friends' and my own Guardians who will be born anew into the Universe very soon.

Until next time, friends  
>See you on the other side~<p> 


	2. Screaming Match

A/N: Hello again, all.

To say that Mortality has been successful is a gross understatement. I can't begin to express my thanks to all of you who read, reviewed, followed and favorited this story so far, and just from the first chapter! I won't lie, I've been going through some pretty hard times lately, and it helps immensely to see how much support this story has gotten alone.

Again, I want to thank each and every one of you who continue to read this story,  
>See you on the other side~<p>

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><p><strong>Disclaimer: I do not own or claim to own Destiny. The copyright goes to Bungie and Activision.<strong>

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><p>Phae's mind was clouded as she stormed off to a bay at the lowest level of the flight deck, which housed her personal ship, or what was left of it, anyway. Everything she wanted to scream and vent at the arrogant Titan flooded her thoughts. <em>Irresponsible. <em>She wanted to rip him a new one, but it wasn't worth it. _Idiotic. Disrespectful._ He was just another narcissistic Guardian caught up in his ego trip, like there was something special about him, like he was superior to everyone else.

In a deliberate act to clear her mind of the negativity, Phae stopped and shook her head to rid herself of the anger. She took deep breaths, rubbed her temples, pinched the bridge of her nose with her forefinger and thumb, even counted to 10 to further attempt to calm down, to no avail. For whatever reason, Roarke's blatant disregard for the safety of others just stuck in her side like a thorn.

"Guardians…" she sneered under her breath. Phae gave up on putting the scorn aside through sheer force of will and continued on to her ship. Maybe distracting herself would help where persistence failed. Rounding the final corner to her personal hangar brought the greatest vex to Phae's very existence in sight: a broken, battered Phaeton Class long-range jump ship.

The engineer paused in the massive doorway, slumped against the polished steel frame and sighed, contemplating. The ship was nowhere near being space-worthy yet. The primary turbines were both shot, the cockpit was separated into two pieces for the time being, nearly half of the starboard wing was sheared clean off and sitting in mangled scrap on the floor, not to mention all of the internal damage. The hull itself was warped and disfigured to the point that jacks and lifts couldn't equally balance the weight, so Phae simply let the beaten vessel lie on the bare deck.

_There are answers in here somewhere dammit… _Phae thought to herself as she chewed her thumbnail in agitation. It was a project nearly seven years in the making, and still she had barely made any progress, shedding no light on an already confusing situation. With a sigh, she pushed off the wall and slowly approached the pile of scrap. She tentatively reached out and ran her fingers along the burn residue and scarred metal. _I'll figure you out one of these days._ Phae hopped through a large cut in the hull, landing her between the pilot seat and the control panel, which was inactive and coated in a thick layer of dust from neglect.

Phae sank heavily into the cushioned seat, sighing as she tried to relax into the familiar cockpit of her ship. The dust knocked loose from her arrival hung in the air, clinging to her hair and clothes. She closed her eyes and sat there, doing nothing. The silence did wonders to ease the storm of her mind, but that didn't last long as a pair of footsteps echoed through the open cut in the hull above her.

"Are you seriously going to make me do this?" Roarke's voice carried from outside the ship.

"Someone has to be your voice of reason, and I'm already stuck with you, so yes, I am," responded his Ghost with a tone of reluctance.

The wrinkle on her forehead returned as Phae immediately angered at the all-too-familiar voice of Roarke. _Why now?_ she thought, opting to stay in her seat and wait for him to leave.

"Hello?" Roarke yelled, instantly receiving his own echo from the edges of the cubic room. Phae cringed as it bounced around inside the ship. "Are you sure she's even here?"

"Let's see. The ship registered under her name is here. I'm reading vital signs inside said ship. Oh, and the secondary chief mechanic said she spends most of her free time down here! Yes, I'm sure, _Guardian,"_ Roarke's Ghost responded with an increasingly heavy amount of sarcasm, the glowing blue eye rolling within its apparatus.

_Stupid Ghost! _Phae stood from her seat and grabbed a wrench from the floor before hopping out through the breach. "Go away!" she bellowed as she hurled the cast-iron tool sloppily in Roarke's direction.

"Whoa!" Roarke yelped as he jumped to his left, narrowly avoiding the haphazardly thrown tool. "What the fuck, lady!?"

"You almost killed me once today, so I thought I'd return the favor," Phae answered in a cold, flat tone as she stalked toward him. An electric, ethereal film of energy slid over her skin as her anger nearly boiled over, but to her credit, Phae restrained herself. "Now what do you want, _Guardian_?"

"I came here to try and _apologize_ for earlier!" Roarke growled back. He noticed the layer of energy playing across Phae's body, but chose to ignore it as he yanked off his helmet to glare at her with bright blue eyes. "But if you're going to start being a _bitch _before I can even try, then maybe I should just forget the whole fucking notion!"

It took every ounce of willpower not to just pick up the Titan and hurl him out of the hangar. Phae had to clench both fists hard enough to draw blood from her fingernails to do so, but it was better than losing her temper and reducing a Guardian to a pool of particles for his Ghost to reassemble. With that thought, Phae simmered down to a cold burn and turned her gaze to the Ghost which hovered just at the edge of her periphery and sighed. She turned and slowly retreated to her broken ship. "What ever did you see in him, little Ghost…?" she asked, defeated.

"I've asked myself that very question, many times. The closest thing I have to an answer, is that he's quite good at scaring away the Darkness," the Ghost sighed, swiveling to gaze his cerulean light directly on Roarke. "Though, that seems to be about it."

"Hey!" Roarke rebutted indignantly. "Standing _right here!"_

"Yes, yes you are," Phae mocked, "why _are _you still here? Just leave me be." She stood next to the battered vessel and gently laid a hand on the surface, her back still turned to Roarke.

"Fine! Fuck you!" Roarke threw his hands up. He began to turn on his heel and walk away, but then came to a sudden stop. He turned around so suddenly it looked more like a jerking seizure than human movement. "You know what? No! What the fuck is your problem, huh? Why do you act like I'm the bad guy, when you're a Guardian hiding out in the fucking Tower when there are literally _billions _of things out there that want everyone in the City dead!? Yeah, I was using a reactor I didn't know anything about! Back in my day, we didn't have long-distance space travel, so fucking sue me for not understanding the advanced mechanics of a ship that can hit warp! I'm not gonna let you get on a fucking soap box and chew my ass like bubble-gum when you aren't doing anything but being a coward!"

The air around them fell into a dangerously heated silence. Roarke glared at her, his jaw squared, and waited for tears and a sloppy retort. But, that was it, the straw the broke the camel's back. Something snapped inside Phae's mind, there was no holding back at this point. "A coward? A fucking _COWARD?!"_

She spun on her heel and repeated her march to the Guardian, this time each step welcomed more and more Void energy to wrap and swirl around her being, until she began to heat the very deck under each footprint. She very nearly clutched Roarke's skull with one hand, tempted to burn through it with enough energy to melt steel, but stopped just inches from doing the deed. Instead, she reeled back and punched him square in the jaw.

"Who gave you the right to judge me, huh?! What makes you think I wanted this life?! What about you: your run-of-the-mill Guardian with a fucking chip on his shoulder, thinks he's better than everyone, thinks he's something special, thinks he's hot shit just because he's good at knocking heads. Do you have any idea how insane that is? How ridiculous it is to have absolutely _zero _sense of self-preservation?! Have you ever thought that just maybe, as crazy as it sounds to a _mighty, fucking hero _like yourself, that I don't feel like dying?!" Before Roarke even had a chance to address her barrage of questions, she plucked his Ghost from the air and held it before him. "Do you have any fucking clue what this is for?! It's a piece of the Traveler, and it thought you worthy enough to fight for mankind. It is not a ticket to act like a God damn lunatic and call it heroism!" she barked, and threw Roarke's own Ghost at him. To her slight dismay, the levitating orb skewed and corrected its course, avoiding the Titan entirely.

"Who has to act like a lunatic!? I duck when I'm shot at just like every other Guardian out there! You're the one who's too chickenshit to even try and fight! Guess what, _princess!? _I don't wanna die either! It fucking hurts. A lot. But if me going out there and getting blown to pieces can keep the people in that city down there," Roarke roared as he flung his right hand towards a window overlooking the Last City, "from dying in their own back yards, I'm going to fucking do it!"

"My God, is your brain as dense as your helmet?!" Phae asked, cooling ever-so-slightly. "You actually have the luxury of dying, but not being buried. You have a Ghost _responsible_ for bringing you back from the dead."

The acidic remark on the tip of Roarke's tongue vanished as he processed exactly what Phae was saying, his fierce scowl weakening into a look of confusion, "Are you telling me, you….don't?" He quickly replayed all of the events of the day, noting time after time where he should have seen a Ghost floating near her, but didn't.

"No… When I was reborn, there was no Ghost in sight. To this day, I still don't know why, but I _am _a Guardian." With her resolve returning to its lava-lamp like state, Phae let go of the anger, and returned to the doubt that plagued her very existence. "I'm still looking for answers," she added, turning her attention to the broken Phaeton Class ship.'

Roarke felt the last of his own rage dissipate, a loud sigh escaping his lips. '_I can't stay pissed off at her.. She's not a bitchy coward. She's.. normal. Well, close to anyhow. Admittedly still kind of a bitch, though.' _The Titan sighed again, scratching at the short crew cut atop his head before finally letting his hands drop to his side. "You know, it's not going to be easy to get clues if you never leave home," he spoke up, his voice softer, almost gentle now.

"That _would_ be the case, if the odd occurrences stopped there. I was reborn on _this _ship, a Guardian's ship, with no Ghost."

Roarke simply raised an eyebrow in response, hoping the mechanic would say something truly odd. "And?"

"With no transmat…" his Ghost added, the realization finally hitting the orb.

Phae pointed to the Ghost without turning her gaze from the ship, "There it is, there's the rub. The reason I can't leave home yet."

"Makes sense," Roarke nodded, his hand absently stroking his chin as he looked from Phae to the ship. "What do you need to fix it?"

A dry, heavy laugh escaped Phae's mouth. "What don't I need? Look at it! I'm not even sure I have anything to find in there, mostly because there's nowhere else to start." She paused and chewed on her lip. "I've been throwing everything at it for years now, and haven't learned a thing."

"How about a helping hand then?" Roarke offered. He chuckled at the incredulous look on Phae's face, flashing her a grin. "I might not know much about modern tech. But I've got a group I run with and we go all over. You could tell us what you need and we can try to find it for you."

"Are you kidding? I would never trust someone, let alone a Titan, to find something so important," Phae proclaimed, finally turning her attention back to the other Guardian to find an expression of rejection on Roarke's face. "Which is why I'm going with you."

Roarke's dejected face shifted into a look of chastised mirth, "Alright, if you think you can handle it."

"Friends, or in this case, partners of a sort, typically know each other's names," Ghost cut in, earning a facepalm from his Guardian.

"Shit, that's right. We were so busy with our pissing match we never went through the introduction! My name is Roarke. Used to have another to go with it, but last I looked, all my family died a long time ago," he said, extending his gauntlet-encompassed right hand to shake.

Accepting his gesture of goodwill, Phae shook Roarke's hand and introduced herself. "I go by Phae." A few seconds passed before Roarke froze and he nearly broke out laughing, earning Phae's curiosity. "What?"

"So… you named yourself after your ship?" he asked, barely containing his laughter.

Phae could practically feel the vein begin to pulse in her forehead. "Silence…"


End file.
